The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Various devices, ranging from computers to DVD players to scientific instrumentation, are configured to use a display. Furthermore, oftentimes a device needs to be able to support multiple types of displays. For example, in order to be competitive, a laptop computer typically needs to support its built-in screen as well as various digital and analog displays, such as a desktop CRT or LCD display, or a projection display. Other devices have similar requirements to be compatible with multiple different types of displays.
The large number of different displays available to consumers, however, often use incompatible standards. Digital interface standards and analog interface standards are so dissimilar that some manufacturers conventionally use separate controllers for separate interface standards. Other manufactures have resorted to using a single display controller with a host of electronic “glue” to make the single controller serve multiple displays. Such approaches tend to be costly and therefore undesirable in a highly-competitive market.